


Completely Useless

by putconspiraciesinit



Category: 19th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, Political RPF - US 19th c.
Genre: Afterlife, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 20:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20802557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/putconspiraciesinit/pseuds/putconspiraciesinit
Summary: Thomas Jefferson finds out how his most hated nemesis died.





	Completely Useless

The afterlife had not been exactly what Thomas Jefferson had expected it to be, if he had expected it to exist at all.

It couldn’t be Heaven, that much was certain. But even more certain was that it couldn’t be Hell, as it was very much not tortuous or horrible. It wasn’t euphoric, it wasn’t horrifying, it was...well, really, it was just life. After death. Mediocre, painfully normal, life.

There had been tearful reunions with lost loved ones, but it had been ten years now, and the novelty was now as dead as Jefferson himself and had faded away to monotony.

And then  _ it  _ happened.

***

What Aaron Burr  _ wanted _ to say was ‘Van Pelt, you absolute madman, can you not find it in your heart to cease your pestering me about repenting for my sins and believing in God, just for one moment, and let me die in  _ peace _ ?’ But he did not say that, because how embarrassing would it be for his last words to involve irritatedly snapping at one of his friends. No, his last words had to be something that fit his image. Otherwise somebody would make up something awful, because who could disprove it? So what he  _ did _ say was,

“On that subject, I am coy.”

The next thing Burr knew, he was...waking up in a bed?

It certainly wasn’t the bed he had been confined to for the past while, and his entire body felt very different.

_ What  _ is _ this? _ He thought.  _ Was all of that simply a particularly elaborate vision? Perhaps I really  _ do _ need to sleep, and perhaps lay off the laudanum for a little while. _

But it didn’t feel like sleep deprivation, or a hangover, or a laudanum crash. If anything, Burr felt good. Better than he had in years.

***

Jefferson was out for a walk when  _ it  _ happened. He saw somebody else out for a walk. That in and of itself, seeing somebody else out for a walk, was absolutely not abnormal, but the somebody in question...looked  _ horrifyingly _ familiar.

A young man, about a foot shorter than Jefferson, with very pale skin and long curly black hair, wearing a bright red coat.

Jefferson felt his body--arguably he didn’t  _ really _ have one anymore, but it certainly  _ felt _ exactly like a living body--go cold. His eyes narrowed.

It had to be a hallucination, of course. That was the only acceptable explanation. And it wasn’t implausible, either; for a couple of years after...that man...had left Jefferson’s cabinet, Jefferson had seen him everywhere. Every short man with black hair or a brightly-colored coat or bags under his eyes looked like him. Perhaps Jefferson’s affliction regarding him had never really went away. Perhaps this mysterious figure’s appearance was simply a trick of the light.

But there was no  _ goddamn _ way Aaron Burr was really here.

***

Burr could  _ sense _ when somebody was standing behind him. He had always had that ability, as long as he could remember. Nobody snuck up on him. And somebody was definitely standing behind him. He could just feel it. But this felt different. Usually it was just a vague sense of there being something there, but right now, Burr felt...discernibly, primally  _ scared _ . Like there wasn’t just something behind him, but something threatening. He turned around slowly, not sure what to expect.

Surely, now that he was dead, he didn’t need a heart anymore. He didn’t need to breathe. But he clearly still had a heart and still  _ did _ breathe, as he could feel his heart pounding and his breath slowing to a halt as he saw who was standing behind him. His eyes must have been the size of dinner plates.

Burr hadn’t seen Thomas Jefferson in decades. They hadn’t seen each other again after that one dinner in ‘05, and last he’d checked, it was 1836. That was thirty-one years.  _ Surely _ thirty-one years  _ had _ to be enough time to forget somebody’s face. But apparently not this face. For it was absolutely Thomas Jefferson standing there, way too close to Burr for comfort.

Burr took a step back.

Every atom in his body seemed to be screaming,  _ run away! Get out of there, you great imbecile! _

For a moment, Burr almost believed in God, and in Hell. And that perhaps that was where he was.

Jefferson spoke.

“ _ You _ .”

Burr reached into the pocket of his coat, but there wasn’t anything there. Apparently, the afterlife had seen fit to give him the dignity of clothes, but not the safety of weapons. Then again, they were all already  _ dead _ , so perhaps that made sense. But all it really  _ meant _ was that Burr was standing before Thomas Jefferson unarmed.

“Me.”

For a few seconds, neither man spoke. They simply stood there are stared at each other with a downright ungodly amount of hatred in their eyes.

“It really is you, isn’t it.” murmured Jefferson.

“I wish it wasn’t, sir.”

“I wish the same.”

Another long pause ensued.

Burr’s body finally unfroze, and he took a step back.

“You may think I won’t do anything about you standing so close to me, but I will. Try anything, make any sudden moves, and I...I’ll--”

“You’ll do nothing,  _ little _ Burr, because I am one-foot taller than you are and we are both already dead, so injuring me would be pointless.”

“Tell me something, Burr. Just tell me one thing.”

“ _ Tell you something _ ? Tell you s--my God, Jefferson! Thirty-one years, and you  _ still _ \--what are you going to do, hm? Hang me?”   
“Burr--”

“WE ARE DEAD, JEFFERSON!  _ DEAD _ !” roared Burr. “CAN YOU NEVER SIMPLY GIVE IT UP?”

“TELL ME HOW YOU DIED, THEN!”

The sound of Jefferson shouting activated something primal in Burr, who immediately took another step back and braced himself.

“Sir--”

“Tell me.”   
“I...I had a stroke, sir. I’m eighty years old, sir, it happens.”

***

After Burr had said that, Jefferson had made the mistake of taking a step towards the man, who had promptly made a run for it.

Part of Jefferson wanted to run after him. He knew from workplace experiences that Burr couldn’t outrun him.

But he didn’t, because the bigger part of him wanted to never see Burr again.

He told himself what Burr said wasn’t true. Surely Burr was just lying to rile him up. But deep down, he knew it  _ was _ true. And God, that  _ hurt _ . It really, really hurt.

He had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on killing Burr.

Tens of thousands of hours on killing Burr.

He had devoted most of his mind, his  _ soul _ , to killing Burr.

He had risked the safety of his country, the structural integrity of his government, he had sicced the  _ entire _ army on Burr. He had done  _ literally _ everything in his power as President of the United States to kill Burr.

And Burr had outlived him by a decade only to die of a  _ stroke _ . At age  _ eighty _ .

Everything that had happened in the mid-to-late 1800s had been...completely useless.

Jefferson didn’t speak another word that day.


End file.
